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"foremost" is also used as a crossword clue. If that's what you saw, the answer is often leading (7 letters).
Definitions
before anything else
Word origin
From Old English formest, fyrmest (“earliest, first, most prominent”), from Proto-Germanic *frumistaz, from the locative stem *fur-, *fr- + the superlative suffix *-umistaz, stem ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pr-. The suffix *-umistaz was a compound suffix, created from the rarer comparative suffix *-umô (as in Old English fruma) + the regular superlative suffix *-istaz (English -est); *-umô in turn is from Proto-Indo-European *-mHo-.
Used in a sentence
“She prankes not by hir mistresse side, she preases not to bée / The foremost of the companie, as when she erst was frée.”
“As I plunged into the reeds, my foremost pursuers emerged from the gap.”
“Juan Diego hadn’t noticed the other people in the temple, except for what appeared to be two mourners; they knelt in the foremost pew.”
Source: Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
Used as a crossword answer2 curated clues
01“At the very front”8 letters
02“Leading”8 letters
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